Ajit Singh shakes hands with Prakash Karat at the CPM office in Delhi on Monday. (PTI)

Lucknow, July 22: Engineering degrees from IITs, one of them in Illinois, a career in the US computer industry for 15 years, sent his son for education in the UK.

Guess who we are talking of?

It’s not anyone from the Congress, the party slammed by the Left for its growing proximity to the US of A, but Ajit Singh, the “farmer leader” from Uttar Pradesh who has since joined hands with the Left and Mayavati to oppose the nuclear deal with Washington.

Ajit is not alone.

Even the CPM bosses, who otherwise have an irrevocable dislike for the West, are not averse to education in the US or the UK, the bastions of capitalism.

CPM general secretary Prakash Karat, staunchly opposed to the US and the nuclear deal, went to study at the University of Edinburgh in the UK. Kerala state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan’s son Vivek is doing a business administration course in Birmingham.

Likewise, his “suspicion” of America and the West has not stopped the US-educated Ajit Singh from sending son Jayant to the UK for higher education.

Called Chhote Chaudhary because he looks every inch like his grandfather Chaudhary Charan Singh, Jayant now looks after the youth wing of the Rashtriya Lok Dal, the party formed by his father in the late nineties. He keeps meeting party colleagues and is said to have a keen interest in agriculture.

The 34-year-old Jayant specialised in finance management from the London School of Economics, but didn’t find it too exciting to pursue a career there.

He came back in 2002 from Britain to join the family vocation and is said to have made a mark in handling the party.

Sources said Jayant is tipped to take over as leader of the Jats in western UP.

RLD party workers are impressed with the new generation farmer leader. “He rekindles the memory of Chaudhary Charan Singh as he tries to emulate his grandfather in everything that he does. He is educated abroad but he still respects elders. It is as if Chaudhary sahab is back among us,” said Anil Singh, a farmer leader in Baghpat.

Like son, like father. The 69-year-old Ajit Singh, who did his BTech from IIT Kharagpur, has an MS in computer engineering from another school that shares the same initials as that of his Indian alma mater: the prestigious Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.

The champion of farmers worked for 15 years in the software industry in the US after completing his master’s while his father fought for agrarian issues.

But America now appears to be a disliked word. Ajit had initially agreed to back the UPA in the trust vote but later did a turnaround as he felt the nuclear deal was against Indian interests.

The government had agreed to his demand that Lucknow airport be named after Charan Singh, but that apparently wasn’t enough to enlist his support.